"How to Personalize the Portfolio" (tips from Enrique Gonzalez)

Enrique Gonzalez has experience building personal history workbooks with his students at Highland Park High School.

Look at the image below.

There's the headmaster, Enrique, sitting with students as they talk about their physical portfolios.

The content is there... The Digital Portfolio project aims to put that information online.   An important added piece of CONTENT for the portfolio is Enrique's Personal History Workbook.

Enrique comments about Digital Portfolios:  "Many educators in California claim that we've done everything we can with portfolios.  However, by PERSONALIZING the porfolio with a personal history workbook, the teachers get to know each student better."



Enrique is an advisor to the Digital Portoflio project.  He can be reached at (909) 452-9152 or by email at egcg@me.com.   He is author of the ebook  "Personal History Workbook."

tinyURL.com/PersonalHistoryWorkbook  (video)
tinyURL.com/PersonalHistoryWorkbook2  Free Ebook

Description of the book (on Amazon)

Free Ebook

This book shows you the Personal History project that students at Highland Park High School use to make history come alive. The aim is to make the high school experience personal to the student. Build the curriculum around the interests of each student. The Personal Learning Plan for each student should be unique. I’ve spent at least ten hours a year talking by phone with Enrique Gonzalez since I met him at Frida Kahlo High School in Los Angeles on October 24, 2009. I met students who spoke clearly and confidently about where they hoped to go (university, music, armed services, private business). I saw then that I would need a workbook to help guide me and my students to follow the path where these confident students were walking. Enrique has freely shared his techniques with me, which is why he is the lead author of this collection of worksheets. 
Part One has initiatives that some students might want to pursue after completing their Personal History Workbook. 
Part 2 is the Global Skills or “seven survival skills” that Harvard professor Tony Wagner has written and spoken about. Students are encouraged to spend some time with “seven survival skills Tony Wagner” (go ahead, do the search) and then look at these topics: 

The Twelve Global Skills Can we take the initiative? Can we begin something? Can we handle our “automatic negative thoughts”? Can we build our “resilience”? Cab we build a global network? Are we ready to work in the Global Economy? 
Part 3 I highly recommend Dan Pink’s website danpink.com and I hope these words will drive your attention toward his books. His series of books have a common thread: how to prepare students for the global economy. The bottom line: Get started with a project. I recommend the free list of projects that Matt Blazek has compiled at www.TinyURL.com/MattBlazek and www.TinyURL.com/BlazekProjects 
The Power of CreateSpace The ultimate goal of this book is to inspire you to interview an older person and ask dozens of questions from the StoryCorps.org list of questions. Go ahead, record the session and then transcribe what the older person said. Create a book. Capture a personal history. This book is dedicated to the students at Highland Park High School who gave their time freely in Feb. 2013 and who are working to complete an interesting yearbook. Special shout out to Drake, Ireland and the GRID team.


Build a better future by harnessing the power of your past
(a quote from a TEDx talk by Neil  TEDx

"Make history a habit.  Include history at dinner"

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"Stories told or untold can make the difference"